Florida Gov. Rick Scott is facing heavy lobbying from both sides of the fast-track foreclosure bill that arrived on his desk this week.

Response in support of the plan, HB 87, narrowly outpaces those fighting the bill, which passed both chambers during the 2013 legislative session after years of debate and compromise.

Calls in favor of the legislation stood at 632 on Thursday, with opposition calls at 563.

Scott has until June 12 to take action on the bill, or he can allow it to become law without his signature. He’s been asked by homeowner advocates and Sen. Darren Soto, D-Orlando to veto the legislation on grounds that it violates historic property rights laws and puts more onus on the homeowner to prove why he or she shouldn’t lose their house.

“In the middle of the game this law would change the rules of current engagement of existing trials before judges,” said Oppenheim Law, South Florida real estate [foreclosure] defense attorney Roy Oppenheim, who opposes the bill. “This will only create more uncertainty and a host of new issues will ultimately arise.”

Proponents of the bill say it will streamline Florida’s meandering foreclosure process, making it easier to foreclose on abandoned and vacant homes while helping homeowners by reducing the amount of time a bank can pursue a borrower for unpaid debt from five years to one year.Continue reading→

This post by Roy Oppenheim was originally published in Yahoo! Homes and is being redistributed on South Florida Law Blog with their permission.

Recently, we won a court victory against one of the nation’s biggest financial players.

Our client, who had a $2.5 million mortgage, stopped making payments after the bank forced placed insurance on the home, even though he already had insurance. Forced placed insurance is a policy that, as the name implies, is placed on a home when the homeowner’s own policy either has lapsed or the bank decided it’s not sufficient.

Just before our client was about to get a “directed” — or favorable — verdict from the judge, the bank fell on its sword and dismissed the suit, recognizing it was about to lose the case because it was unable to prove that it had the proper documentation needed to legally foreclose on the home.

But this win could be short-lived since our client can still fall victim to what is quickly becoming known as a “zombie foreclosure.” As the name suggests, these zombie foreclosures are even more of a nightmare than your basic, everyday foreclosure.

Thousands of homeowners have and continue to become victims of zombie foreclosures — liable for homes they didn’t even know they owned after lenders decided not to pursue a foreclosure after all.

As I have written about previously, banks have been walking away from foreclosures with impunity because it simply isn’t worth their time or money to pursue them. Because there are no regulations in place that say the lenders must tell the homeowner that they have changed their mind about the foreclosure, borrowers are still on the hook — not only for the mortgage on a home they may, or may not, live in, but also any property taxes, homeowner association fees, etc.Continue reading→

The last thing I want to do is scold a judge. But once again foreclosure judges down in Miami-Dade are resorting to old habits, and there is no way I can stand by idly and let the rule of law be trampled on.

Because the rocket docket has risen from the grave and returned to South Florida. Don’t believe me?

Courts across Florida have received hundreds of thousands of dollars to add judges and staff to their undermanned courtrooms. That’s good. But the response in Miami-Dade goes right back to pushing homeowners and lenders back onto an industrial pipeline.

It’s pure lunacy. Once again homeowners’ fundamental constitutional rights are being tossed aside by the Court in favor of expediency. So in other words, we are right back where we started.

Is there still a massive backlog clogging the foreclosure courts in Florida? Yes. Will clearing those cases off the docket help our economy move onward and upward?

Absolutely. But fixing the economy has never been, and was never meant to be, the role of the court.I can’t disagree more with Miami-Dade Judge Jennifer Bailey, who said in the Herald “We’ve been charged by the Supreme Court with this funding to move these cases.’’

Your job, with all due respect, has always been to make sure that the legal process is upheld. Pure and simple.

It is wrong for the court to allow a lender or a servicer to present a case if they don’t have standing, if they aren’t the true owner of the note. It was true during the first round of rocket dockets, and absolutely nothing has changed.Continue reading→

The short answer is, of course! While there are less homes starting the foreclosure process, thereremains a backlog of foreclosure cases in Floridaand in other judicial foreclosure states. Banks are still trying to illegally throw people out of their homes, and so I am still defending many of those homeowners.

Florida remains on the top of the list for states with foreclosure activity, with a filing rate more than double the national average. In Dade County, there are still 60,000 foreclosure cases on the books. In Broward there are 43,000. 1,800 new foreclosures were filed just in Broward County alone last month, which is a substantial increase.